


Wear Your Heart on Your Skin

by Smittywing (Smitty)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Established Relationship, M/M, Oral Sex, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 09:40:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8619406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smitty/pseuds/Smittywing
Summary: Jim is very familiar with Bones’s body. He knows about the ticklish patch of skin right above the crook of his elbow, and the way the hair on the back of his neck stands at attention when Jim kisses him there, and knows the entire constellation of moles on his back.He’s pretty sure the tattoos weren’t there when Bones left the ship two days ago.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Karl Urban did [a thing](https://www.instagram.com/p/BMulp9cBNAF/?hl=en) and [Reccea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reccea/) and I had nervous breakdowns. And she made me write this. Everything is her fault. Thank you, dude. For everything.
> 
> This contains non-consensual tattooing. But I'm going to assume the 23rd century has a way to fix that.
> 
> _“Wear your heart on your skin in this life.”_  
>  ― Sylvia Plath, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose and Diary Excerpts

Like grief, Jim has five stages of Bones-Getting-Captured-On-An-Away-Mission. (It’s like the guy has a beacon over his head advertising his refusal to take a life.)

**Stage 1: Denial**

Bones has a way of wandering off to look at things. He’s naturally curious despite all that death/disease/danger stuff he’s always on about. So it has, to Jim’s shame, taken a little while to realize Bones is _missing_ -missing a few times. 

(Occasionally he actually sees Bones get taken and then the denial stage flashes by as quickly as he can think, “Oh, no you _didn’t_ ,” which Uhura used to say when yeah, he actually had and usually regretted it later.)

**Stage 2: Anger**

This one is pretty self-explanatory.

**Stage 3: Negotiation**

The usual pattern is that Jim offers a simple bargain: they return Bones, they get to live. Then Spock steps in and things get complicated.

**Stage 4: Burn Civilizations to the Ground**

Also known as “Rescue.”

**Stage 5: Reunion Sex**

This one is usually pretty self-explanatory and then there was the time Bones was held by a species called the Goschalk or Galshach or something. Jim got to skip stages 3 and 4 because they basically just needed a healer and when they were done, they gave him right back.

Well, not _right_ back.

Jim didn’t realize right away because Bones looked pretty normal. He was pissy, which was normal. He refused to allow his staff to examine him - even though it was standard procedure - which was normal. Spock neck-pinched him and Chapel ran through the standard post-involuntary-detention exam. Which was, despite how it sounds, normal. Jim was waiting in Bones’s room when he got back, still rubbing angrily at his neck.

“Oh, you too,” Bones snaps, dropping his hand from his shoulder. “You know I _am_ a doctor. I can run the same exams on myself that I run on every other member of the crew.”

“You can,” Jim agrees. “But you’re not that great at recording the results.”

“Jim,” Bones says and Jim knows him so, so well, can hear the tiredness and the resignation in his voice, can hear the edge that means he wants to be left alone, and that’s new. Not _new_ -new. New to the post-kidnapping-for-medical-skills repertoire. Jim has heard it before, when Bones failed to comport himself to his own standards in an Academy shuttle test, when he didn’t catch on to an academic concept as fast as he felt he should, when a crew member dies, and shouldn't have. There are times when Bones doesn’t want anyone, even Jim, around. 

And Jim is usually okay with that but not today. “What is it?” he asks, stepping into Bones’s personal space (which was where he usually was anyway) and running his hands over Bones’s shoulders and down his arms. “Talk to me. What happened?”

“Nothing _happened_ ,” Bones says, stepping out of Jim’s grasp. He crosses his arms over his chest. “I saved the guy, we had a big party, they honored me in the way of their people, and here I am.”

“Okay.” They haven’t even kissed and Jim has a bad feeling but he just says, “Do you want me to give you some time alone?”

“Yeah,” Bones says, his eyes sliding away. “I’m just beat, is all.”

“Okay.” It’s becoming a really annoying thing to hear out of his own mouth and Bones has stepped far enough away that it would be weird at this point for Jim to go over and kiss him. “Comm me when you wake up?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Jim leaves. He almost leaves. He walks close enough to the door that it opens and he has one foot over the threshold and he just can’t. Leadership seminars and human body language and Bones tell him - it’s all wrong. Something important is wrong.

He steps back. The door closes. 

Bones is going to put up a fuss, he knows that. And frankly, Jim doesn’t like the options he may have to address. But it’s Bones and he can’t leave. 

Jim takes a fortifying breath and turns around and - oh. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out.

Jim is very familiar with Bones’s body. He knows about the ticklish patch of skin right above the crook of his elbow, and the way the hair on the back of his neck stands at attention when Jim kisses him there, and knows the entire constellation of moles on his back.

He’s pretty sure the tattoos weren’t there when Bones left the ship two days ago.

Yes, _the tattoos_.

Two six-inch clawmarks are inked over his right shoulder, the skin between the black rips dyed red. The design on his left pectoral, stretching up to his shoulder is more intricate and despite his perfect vision, Jim can’t quite make out all the details. He takes an involuntary step forward because he really wants, he _needs_ to see -

“I thought you left!” Bones is angry and flushed red and - he’s embarrassed and struggling back into his shirts, still paired together and halfway over his head, and he’s making a mess of it.

“I - I knew you weren’t okay,” Jim says, suddenly feeling more awkward and inappropriately aroused than he has since he was a teenager. “But. Holy fuck. Where did those come from?” 

Bones is hella hot. Jim met him on a shuttle, drunk and scruffy and threatening to throw up, and he’d still been struck with just how hot Bones had been. But somehow he’s gotten hotter. The muscles in his shoulders are bunched and his abdominals are stripped down - either he’s been working out or he didn’t eat for the last two days, or both, and he’s tan, he glows.

And the ink.

“Aw,” Bones says, sighing and giving up on the shirts. He tosses them vaguely toward the closet. “Look, don’t worry about it, I’m pretty sure Christine and I can figure out what they used and can remove them. I hope,” he adds almost as an afterthought.

“Why would you - were they not…” Jim steps forward, like the ink is magnetic and drawing him closer even though Bones is bristling like humanity’s gentlest porcupine.

“They’re some kind of victory mark,” Bones confesses. He touches the claws marks with two fingers. “This was the wound on the guy I stitched back together. And this one - “ he touched the more complicated one. “I don’t know, it’s a healing thing. Victory over death or - or something.”

“Did they do that without your _permission?_ ” Jim demands, and okay, it’s not as bad as some of the things he could have come up with if he’d let his imagination run wild, but it’s a _violation_ and he’s ready to take a cadre of security personnel back to that planet and go on with Step 4 after all.

“Yeah,” Bones admits. “Are we far enough from the planet that you won’t blow it up?”

“We can turn around,” Jim says.

“Let’s not,” Bones says. “C’mon, Jim. I mean, they meant it as an honor.” He rolls his shoulders uncomfortably. The motion makes his pecs stretch and contract and draws Jim’s eyes to his nipples. “Look, I’m not okay with - this was not _okay_. But you don’t get to be madder than I am and you don’t get to go blow shit up and ruin all the goodwill we have with those folks.”

Jim might argue that his tendency toward good will had been severely compromised when he learned the Ghoshians - whatever - had taken Bones but he knows what Bones is saying. He needs Jim to have perspective and be the reasonable one while Bones just processes what happened.

Jim can do that. He will do that. He won’t do it very well, but he can do that, for Bones.

“Okay,” he says. His eyes slip to Bones’s navel and treasure trail briefly but his gaze is inexorably drawn back up to the marks. 

“I mean, now that you’ve seen them,” Bones says, “we could get on with the reunion sex. You know that’s the only part of the whole kidnapping thing I actually like. Although that party wasn’t bad. Or wouldn’t have been if they hadn’t roofied and tattooed me.”

Jim takes a shaky breath. “I think you should probably know,” he says. “I’m pissed about the violation aspect and I understand they upset you. But Jesus Christ, they’re hot.”

Bones flushes but he doesn’t look angry or offended. “Seriously, Jim?”

“I know,” Jim says, moving closer, because he has to, even though he had been trying to give Bones a safe personal distance. “I know it’s inappropriate. I just.” He takes another step and that puts him within arm’s reach and he stops.

“Well,” Bones says. “At least it’ll put a new twist on the reunion sex, right?” He reaches out and catches Jim’s sleeve in his fingers and that’s enough, that’s a signal that Bones may not be okay, but he’s okay with _Jim_.

Jim steps in and frames Bones’s face in his hands and kisses him, gently at first, tender, a welcome home before things heat up. It never takes long for things to heat up. They call it reunion sex, but sometimes Jim thinks of it as reclamation sex, touching and kissing every part of Bones, reminding them both that he’s here, on the Enterprise, with Jim, and it’s going to be okay.

Bones drags Jim’s shirts over his head and when they can’t kiss without a mouthful of fabric, Jim draws back and lets himself be stripped to the waist. His eyes, when he opens them, go right to the tattoos again and he cups a hand on Bone’s deltoid and instead of kissing his mouth, kisses his shoulder at the very top of the ink.

Bones shudders but presses close, his cock hard in his pants against Jim’s hip. Jim cuffs his other hand over the side of Bones’s neck, holding him still while he mouths reverently over the ink, different texture, different taste. 

Up close he can see there’s a skull at the center of the left one, but it’s stylized and decorated and the meaning is clear - Bones defeated Death. 

Sometimes it’s easy to roll with Bones’s description of himself as an “old country doctor”, to forget that his own aptitude scores are off the charts, that he was the youngest virologist at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta. The daily routine of vaccines and healing of scrapes and bruises from missions gone awry, hyposprays and regenerators, are an easier context than the actual medical miracles Bones produces whenever someone manages to screw up on a level of epic proportions. It’s only then that Jim remembers that Bones is the real warrior of the two of them, the one fighting the only battle that matters, the one against death, fighting for the crew members who can only take the fight so far on their own.

He licks up the slashes and follows them over Bones’s shoulder. They don’t curve into his neck and they don’t go all the way down to his pec, and Jim wonders if he’s actually never licked this skin before. If he had, he didn’t take _note_ the way he’s doing right now. He didn’t think about it later, like he’s going to tomorrow. He breathes out, breath gusting over the dampened skin and raising goosebumps. 

The design, the skull, maybe of an animal? _The_ animal? Is more complicated, banners and a flower at the base, and Jim tries to follow the flow of it, starting with the outer swirls and working his way in and over the center, over Bones’s heart.

Bones’s chest is rising under his mouth, nearly heaving, his breath fast and ragged. Jim’s feeling a little aggressive in the way that only comes with the adrenaline and endorphins of near-death and he scrapes his teeth over and around the tight bud of Bones’s nipple, and then sucks, soothing with his tongue.

Bones groans low in the back of his throat and his cock jumps against Jim’s thigh. Jim drops to his knees, graceful and easy, and unfastens Bones’s trousers. Bones’s legs are a little too long for this to work quite right, but they’re not quite there yet. He slides his hands into the opening and spreads his hands over Bones’s hips, the curve of the bone in his palm and the heat of his skin warming his fingers. He drags his hands down Bones’s legs, over the tight thigh muscles, bringing the trousers down to Bones’s knees. He mouths sharp kisses and light nips up the pale, tender skin of Bones’s inner thighs, and nuzzles the bottom of the hard swell in his dark boxer briefs. 

“Jim,” Bones sighs, sliding one hand into Jim’s hair - only one of the many reasons for Jim’s bedhead problems - and strokes everything the wrong way. “Hold on, darlin’.” Jim takes the words the wrong way, as usual, and instead of waiting, he centers his grip on Bones’s hips and shifts him toward the bed. “Let me just - okay, fine, have it your way.” Bones stumbles back into the bed and sits down hard, spreading his knees wider.

Jim walks forward on his knees, settling between Bones’s legs, using his own knees to pin Bones’s pants to the ground. This is better and Jim braces his hands on the edge of the bed and opens his mouth over the swell of Bones’s cock, over the stretch of his underwear. The first mouthful is dry and just tastes like cotton at the base, but where the head is soaking through the fabric, they’re slick and spicy and tonguing the head of Bones’s cock through them is almost as good as skin.

Bones makes a sound low in his throat and lets go of Jim’s hair to tuck his thumbs under the waistband and push his underwear away from his cock. Jim helps, pushing them down to Bones’s ankles and kneeling on them.

Jim has had Bones’s cock in his mouth - well, he wouldn’t say a _lot_ but it probably _is_ a lot - and he knows the weight of it and the taste, and he knows what Bones likes, and he knows how to get him off. But right now he might well be starting from scratch. He loops his fingers around the shaft and drags up slowly, shifting the skin as he tightens toward the head. He tongues the tip like he’s never seen it before, laps at the slit and the pre-come still welling from it, and traces the entire head with carefully sketched licks.

“Jim, c’mon,” Bones rasps, shifting on the bed. His fingers are fisted in the blanket and he’s leaning back to push his hips forward. The sharp black and red of the tattoos glare down at Jim, who does as requested, opens his throat, and takes Bones deep. He keeps his fingers ringed around the base, massaging and using his grip as leverage if he has to pull back a bit. 

Bones leans back on his elbows and rocks his hips, not enough to choke Jim, just enough to make up for not being able to spread his legs any wider, since Jim has pinned his legs with his own pants. Jim looks up and decides he’s never looking away. Bones’s shoulders are tilted up and he can see the dark ink winding its way over Bones’s skin and he can see Bones’s eyes, dark, dark as Bones bites his lip and lets himself lift his hips carefully in time with Jim’s rhythm. 

Jim scratches his fingers down Bones’s thighs to his knees, and pushes himself a little higher, a little deeper, and the groan Bones lets out is worth the awkward spasm in his throat. 

“Kid, I’m not gonna last much longer,” Bones warns and as much as Jim used to hate being called ‘kid’, Bones is allowed to do it forever and ever. “That what you want?”

Jim thinks about it, thinks about Bones releasing into his mouth and swallowing it away, curling up around him and touching the tattoos a little more as they nuzzled into a damp and overwarm nap. And he wants it, he does.

But there are other things he wants more. Like dragging this out longer. Like looking at those gorgeous inky marks on Bones’s skin some more. Like feeling Bones inside him.

He lingers on the withdrawal, sucking and using his tongue, but then he rolls up to his feet and unfastens the top of his trousers.

“Yeah,” Bones says, his voice rasping deep. “Let me see you.”

Bones says shit like this all the time and it’s no wonder the man can’t have a one-night stand to save his life. It’s far too easy to fall in love with him. Jim opens his pants and lets them drop to his knees while Bones is kicking away the pile of clothes tangled around his ankles. Jim has been hard pretty much since he got an eyeful of the tattoos and he’s starting to think he might not last that long either. He steps out of his pants and boots at once and then drags his underwear all the way down his legs and steps out of those, too.

Bones looks like he’s going to say something and that might actually push Jim over the edge, so instead he gets one knee up on the bed and swings the other one across Bones’s hips, straddling him, their cocks bumping together.

“Jim.” It’s nearly a growl now and Jim leans back to dig the lube out of the nearby drawer as Bones pushes himself further onto the bed, bringing Jim with him. It’s an awkward maneuver but Jim manages to snag the lube and thumb the cap open. “Fuck.”

“That’s the plan,” Jim says, reaching back and smearing enough to ease the way. He grips Bones’s cock - he’ll need the extra lube more at the base than at the head anyway and eases himself back until he can feel Bones’s cock at his opening. He knows how to slide his body onto it, going slow enough to spread the lube as he fills himself.

Bones’s fingers are tight enough on his hips to leave bruises and the breaths he’s taking between clenched teeth are slow and controlled.

“Uh,” Jim says when he rests his butt on Bones’s hips. “Back where it belongs.”

“Jim.” Bones can say his name a hundred different ways and each one makes him feel something new. 

“Yeah, I just wanna,” Jim says, because Bones makes him a little incoherent. “You feel good, right? I mean, I wanna make you feel good.” And his hand reaches up to the death’s head tattoo.

Bones gives him a throaty chuckle that echos deep inside them both. “You feel good,” he says. “All clenched around me.”

Jim tucks his knees up so he can move further up Bones’s body, so he can fuck himself and trace the tattoos at the same time. Bones helps, his grip on Jim’s hips driving him up and down on Bones’s cock. He’s biting and licking between the bottom edge of the left tattoo and Bones’s sensitized nipple when Bones tugs him down and says, “Jim I’m -” 

Jim sits up a little too fast and Bones shifts inside him, hitting him just right and _bucking_ under Jim as he comes. Jim’s balls draw up as he feels Bones’s cock jerk inside him and he grabs the base of his own cock. He can’t help but pump himself a little as he watches Bones go to pieces under him and he comes, stomach muscles contracting like a cramp.

He falls into a leaning rest - pushup position - bracketing Bones’s shoulders and drops his head to reorient himself. Bones slides out of him and it’s - never his favorite part. But Bones’s hands stroking over his hips and ass, yeah, that’s nice. Jim sits back a little bit, taking the weight off his arms and lifts his head to look at Bones.

His come is spattered pale on Bones’s skin, up his sternum and pecs and up over half of one tattoo. Jim shifts his weight to one hand and touches the mess with two fingers of his other, swirling it over the ribbons of ink and up to the obscure the rest of the image.

Bones wraps long fingers around his wrist and pulls it to his mouth. The touch of his tongue at each of Jim’s fingers makes Jim’s cock twitch a little painfully because it is not even close to time to go again.

The room feels hot and humid and when Bones releases him with a kiss to his palm, Jim rolls off and sprawls sideways on the bed next to him, only the backs of their hands touching

“You know,” Bones says, still a little hoarse and that pleases Jim, “I might not like how they got there, but I can’t complain much about the aesthetic appeal.”

“That mean you’re gonna keep ‘em?” Jim asks, his chest lightening with hope - not necessarily hope that Bones won’t try to erase the marks, although there’s a bit of that. But hope that Bones feels more connected to the story illustrated on his skin. Feels less alienated.

“Don’t hold your breath,” Bones says, but he has that one-sided smile on his face as he stares at the ceiling.

“It’s not too late to turn the ship around,” Jim offers. He keeps his eyes on the ceiling and manfully does not offer to blow anyone up.

Bones rolls onto his side and reaches over to lace his fingers through Jim’s. “Maybe next week,” he says. “Stay.”

Jim rolls to face him. “I’m too fucked out to get a washcloth,” he says with only the slightest bit of contrition. He squeezes Bones’s hand. “And I don’t want you leaving my sight.”

“Hey.” Bones squeezes back and leans forward to kiss him lightly on the lips. “I’m always coming back. You know that, right?”

“I can know it tomorrow,” Jim tells him.

Fin


End file.
